


Redemption (Part I)

by spnredemption



Series: Redemption Road [40]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:31:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnredemption/pseuds/spnredemption
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows…"</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Redemption (Part I)

**Author's Note:**

> **Masterpost:** **[Supernatural: Redemption Road](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/1552.html)** (for full series info,  
>  warnings, and disclaimer)  
>  **Authors:** [](http://swordofmymouth.livejournal.com/profile)[**swordofmymouth**](http://swordofmymouth.livejournal.com/) and [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[**zatnikatel**](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Characters/Pairing:** Dean/Castiel, Sam, OC and canon characters  
>  **Rating:** R (this part)  
>  **Wordcount:** ~20,500  
>  **Warnings:** language, violence, sexuality  
>  **Betas:** [](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**dotfic**](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/) and [](http://murron.livejournal.com/profile)[**murron**](http://murron.livejournal.com/)  
>  **Art:** Chapter banners by [](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/profile)[**zatnikatel**](http://zatnikatel.livejournal.com/); digital paintings by **[quantum_witch](http://quantum_witch.livejournal.com)** , **[Mobius-9](http://mobius-9.deviantart.com)** , and **[Rinienne](http://rinienne.deviantart.com)** , which you can also find **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/48631.html#cutid1)** , **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/47873.html)** and **[here](http://spn-redemption.livejournal.com/48379.html#cutid1)** ; graphic by **[catstiella](http://catstiella.tumblr.com/)** (NB: art contains _major_ spoilers for the chapter)

  
_Lawrence, Kansas_  
 _1978_

Michael.

 _Michael_ , and his brother's presence sears through Castiel's senses like electricity, corrodes his waning grace like acid, disorients him with a mix of joy and sheer terror as he lurches up off of…a bed he doesn't recall being placed on.

His vessel's heart is beating a rapid tattoo in his chest, and the moonlight flooding in through the windows of the room he is in casts his face an eerie, icy, washed-out blue as he stares up, wide-eyed with his own confusion, at his reflection in a large mirror positioned above the bed.

 _Michael_ , and his magnetic pull tugs at every elementary particle of Castiel's being with its rightness and its promise of succor, even while its wrongness appalls him, because Michael shouldn't be here. And if he is…the notion fills Castiel with a complicated, hectic desperation he doesn't quite understand, has him choking out Dean's name as he claws at his equilibrium and heaves it back to steady himself.

There is no reply to his cry; the room is quiet, uninhabited but for him. He filters through his grace tentatively, searches for some sign of Dean here, and not for the first time he regrets that the sigils he inscribed on his friend's ribs cloak him so thoroughly. He fumbles in his pocket for the cell phone Dean gave him, snaps it open. There is nothing, no signal, and he shakes it, mutters a curse under his breath at the lack of response. But still there is his brother's low, sibilant, wrathful murmur, _I'll see you soon, Dean_ , cutting through the insistent clamor of six billion human souls, and it's enough, gives Castiel a point in time and space, a location.

For one fraction of a second he considers the fact his brother already knows he's here, and that their kinship won't stop Michael from meting out judgment and justice for Castiel's treachery. And then, _Dean_ , he thinks, and with that thought he beats his wings and he's there, staring through the wreckage of a solid wall into the eyes of the man he last saw gasping his way back to life in Mary Winchester's arms, and seeing his brother gaze back at him.

"So it's true." Michael tilts his head, regards Castiel thoughtfully, and he sounds almost reasonable in his distaste at Castiel's perfidy as he continues. "I didn't want to believe Zachariah."

Castiel tamps down his discomfort and his own anguish, spares a moment to scan their surroundings. As he slants his eyes back, Michael curls John Winchester's lips up into a subtle smile.

"He is safe. As is his brother. I sent them back."

Michael is standing next to Mary Winchester, where her curled body forms a golden-haired comma on the floor, and he inclines his head and contemplates her. "She won't remember this," he says quietly. "She will birth both of her sons."

Castiel feels a surge of despair. "This isn't right," he tries, but he can hear the way his own hopelessness makes his voice hollow. "Please." He puts a hand out, palm up, and he implores. "Please let her be. Let _Dean_ be. This can't be what our Father really wants."

Michael looks up, focuses on Castiel slowly. His stare is grave, it doesn't waver, and Castiel already knows this particular battle is lost.

"Whether this is what our Father wants or intended is not of import, Castiel, not any more," Michael offers. "It's too late to turn back. Lucifer walks, and he must be stopped for the sake of all souls."

Even though his brother's tone is firm with what Castiel knows is both logic and Michael's belief that this is right, it is underpinned with what Castiel thinks might be kindness as he goes on.

"There is no other option, despite your new-found appreciation for free will. All roads lead to the same destination." Michael pauses a beat then, and all the while Castiel can feel the tendrils of his brother's grace vibrating through him, weaving their way into his superconsciousness, tapping his every unspoken thought and feeling. "And that one…your Dean. He is the Righteous Man, the one who began it, and you know the prophecy. The one who began it must end it, or it will never end."

Michael sinks to his knees then, reaches out a slow, considerate hand, places it on Mary Winchester's lower belly. "I can feel him inside her," he murmurs, almost dreamily. "Can you feel him, Castiel? Can you already feel the pull of him?" He looks up, and his eyes gleam critically as he examines Castiel. "He is my vessel. He is me. This is why you serve him, Castiel, why you cleave to him. This is why you love him."

There is a sudden, somber clarity that comes from Michael's conclusion, a simple resolve that springs up inside Castiel in place of the confusion that has always clouded any analysis of the motives that drive him where Dean Winchester is concerned. It positions itself like a barrier between him and his brother, between their shared past, millennia of fealty, respect, and fraternal devotion. Castiel knows that Michael senses it, can feel his brother's flash of outrage and dismay as he pushes up fluidly and draws closer.

Castiel shuffles backwards as Michael approaches, but he will say this even if he knows he won't survive the admission. "I do love him. But that isn't why."

He comes up against a solid surface, allows himself a swift glance behind him to see he has backed into the Impala, swivels back to see Michael so close now that Jimmy Novak's face is reflected in John Winchester's eyes. If there is an instant when Castiel knows he can still run from this, it's gone even before he completes the thought, as he feels his grace tethered and confined here by the archangel.

"Do you think I won't do what has to be done, Castiel?" his brother asks, on a faint sigh that exudes sorrow. "Do you think I won't end you for your duplicity? Even if I don't want to?"

Castiel swallows. "I know you better than that," he answers softly, and he can feel it starting already, can feel himself being dispersed, the strands of him being unlaced and unknitted, pulled apart, as Michael exorcises him; can feel himself weakening, crumpling onto the hood of the car as his brother looms closer and ponders him though the methane glow that seeps out through his vessel’s pores.

"Or I could make you forget your human," Michael says, not unkindly. "I could send you back to him with no memory of what you feel for him."

Through the fire of his own immolation, Castiel can feel the metal skin of the Impala start to bubble and boil under his fingertips as he scrabbles at it, this last piece of Dean. He clings to it as it runs liquid under him and fuses with his vessel's melting flesh and his own dying grace. "Since you can't change who Dean is, you can't change what I feel for him," he gasps. "I am for him…the road I travel will always lead me to him, no matter how many obstacles you lay in my path, and I will always protect him."

He gives up then, gives himself up to the hazy agony and ecstasy of his own termination, but through it he catches Michael's last, faint words, _then perhaps you can best keep him safe for me, brother_ —

—Castiel's arrival is abrupt and sickening, sends him reeling, until he is grasped and steadied, one hand pressed on his chest to stop his collapse, and voices he never expected to hear again saying his name.

"You sonofabitch," Dean is declaring, part relief and part triumph, and his eyes are bright and intense as he stares at Castiel. "You made it."

Castiel blinks slowly at his friend, hears himself croak out, "I did?" He can taste the copper of blood in his mouth, and he holds up his hand and studies it, tries to collect his thoughts past the disquieting suspicion that something important he can't recall just happened. "I'm very surprised," he concedes, and then it goes dark.

  
_Southern Pacific Ocean_  
 _Present day_

Meg can taste something on the tip of her tongue, something strong and sour, something that makes her lips pucker involuntarily. But she can't focus for long enough to work out what it is because the ocean is roaring beside her as it ebbs and flows, and fuck anyone who ever thought the sound of it was restful, because its constant crash-slosh at the periphery of her mind is mind-numbingly repetitive.

Beneath the steady rhythm of the endless tide, she hears another sound that keeps time with it; ragged exhales as someone nearby wheezes out a strangled, hopeless cry, catches their breath, and does it again, over and over. Meg listens to the sound for what might be a long time before it occurs to her to backtrack her brain and figure out why she's here, but the memory of her fall into the abyss after Sam and Castiel is little more than windswept screaming as she plunged endlessly, from what seemed like the top of the universe to the bottom, until she hit the freezing-cold shock of water and everything went black.

She opens her eyes a crack, and everything is scorching daylight after the eternal midnight of the cavern. Sam is a few feet away, the long, dark bulk of his body laid out across the beach in a way that looks almost relaxed. And there is that sound of water again, and Meg becomes aware that her legs feel cold, that the water is lapping at her feet and seeping up her jeans as far as her thighs. Seawater, because where there is beach there is sea, and there is that confirmation of surf swooshing across sand again.

Meg finds herself musing hazily that there was a time – hundreds of years long – when she couldn't even touch the ocean. Too pure, and in the instant she thinks it she recalls another _fall_ , and with it comes the realization that she is sucking in air she actually needs to live now, and the taste in her mouth is salt. Sand crusts her eyes, and every blink is an irritating sweep of lids over grit. Everything hurts too, and an incredible arc and throb of pain dominates where her splinted leg is immersed in brine; but the physical pain is lost in the revelation of a deeper ache, and she can't hold back her soft gasp of grief at the knowledge she is an empty husk, that the comforting, velvet-soft blackness that pulsated at her center is gone, that she is cleansed, sanitized. Weak and vulnerable too, and without the gift of demon-power at her disposal she becomes part of the catastrophe, part of the disaster. Now she shares the misfortune with them all, and she does it bitterly as she heaves herself up out of the sand and onto her elbows at the same time as Sam stirs, rousing himself to consciousness with a groan bitten off between his teeth.

Meg twists, scans the horizon. Along the tide line is the broken wreckage of their ill-fated expedition; assorted bags, pieces of the Duck, firearms washed ashore. When she turns back to look in the other direction, Sam is lurching to his feet on a choked cry and digging footprints into the sand. Beyond him is a huddled figure, and for a moment Meg thinks she sees the shape of massive sails extending out behind it, but they aren't sails, they're…

 _Oh_ , she thinks, with breathless surprise, and in the next second they're gone and from here on in she'll pretend she didn't just totally fangirl over Castiel's wings. She pulls herself together, ignores the fact that she has never run into a set of them before now, even while she mentally fistbumps herself for finally catching a glimpse after she turned mortal, because to witness grace is to burn. It's what they do, the function they serve – to burn the lower demonic orders out from every molecule.

But the wings are gone now, tucked back into invisibility, and in their absence Meg's eyes widen and she takes in the whole of the scene and the extent of the disaster. A body further on up the beach lies just above the seaweed line, where someone – where Castiel – has dragged it out of the reach of the greedy water. Castiel sits cross-legged with Dean's head in his lap, bent over his lover with his arms cradling him. He rocks back and forth, and the sound Meg heard comes from him; a breathless, featureless animal scream, as he shakes and pours out his heart into the salty air.

Meg listens to him for a moment and thinks there ought to be something profound in the revelation that the sound an angel makes in grief is no different from the infinite victims she has tortured. It's one thing to be trapped in a human body, she considers, but to _feel_ it, to truly inhabit that ephemeral humanity – oh, that's the punishment, that's the hurt, and she marvels that something so powerful and above it all can be grounded and forced to feel so much without relief. As Castiel does now.

Another wave laps at her feet and she hauls herself further away from the water. Her fingers scrape on shells and tangle in seaweed until they trip over a long piece of driftwood, jagged and brittle. She thrusts it into the ground, bites into her tongue until blood wells to the surface and fills her mouth, as she uses it to lever herself up onto her knee, and then her one good foot, her broken leg dragging useless behind her.

She hobbles along in Sam's wake as he walks unevenly to Castiel, and she can hear the sounds of the angel's inarticulate breathing. Alongside the sounds of Castiel's labored gasping and the slumped shape of Sam, silhouetted against the burning sun, is the silent presence of the corpse between them. Meg is close enough to see Dean's body in more detail now, and she finds that she's recalling him in the way someone who never paid much attention to him might; a caricature of the youth he was, not the reality of the man he became. His name evokes a series of images, of false machismo and half-assed bravado, cheap food at roadside diners, bad music; but beneath it all, an untamable spirit with a liking for band shirts and denim, and his father's leather jacket. A healthy if emotionally stunted youth.

What Meg sees now is a shadow of the man that was. Whatever happened to him after he slid the gun over to her in the Duck and walked away has burned his skin to raw and blistered, melted through to gleaming bone along his arms and down his torso. There are gaping rips in his flesh, and the rack of his ribs protrudes through his open chest like the keys of a piano, blood seeping languidly all around them. Dark hollows have gone purple beneath his eyes, but for all that, his face is oddly serene, the thick fringe of lashes on his cheeks peaceful. Meg muses that from the neck up, he looks as if he crashed out to sleep off his hangover after one hell of a party, that he might wake up again at any moment.

He never will.

Castiel knows it. He sways and shivers, but when he hears their approach he snaps to attention, pulling his gaze away from the body in his arms and looking up as Sam's shadow falls across him. His face has all the contour and shape of a crumpled sheet of paper, but his eyes blaze electric blue in the morning light. "Help me, Sam," he whispers, parched and desperate. "You have to help me. We'll start from the beginning, and—"

"What is that, Cas?" Sam says, strained but gentle.

"The spell…if we just do it again, if we go back to the beginning and fix it, and—"

"Cas."

"—remember, Sam, Sumerian phonetics can be difficult to the untrained speaker but I can help you through the difficult passages…there must have been a word we tripped up on—"

"Cas."

"—but when we get it right this time, and we _will_ get it right, I know we will…then we can do it—"

"No, Cas."

"—together, we'll do it together. And if it doesn't work there's always Enochian, there are so many rituals, so we should start while it's early and then—"

"Cas!"

Sam's switch from gentle to sharp breaks through the trance, and Meg steels herself for the result.

"My name is not part of the spell, Sam," Castiel finally acknowledges him, terse. He doesn't pause for breath, begins to recite the spell himself instead, and even from a couple of yards away Meg feels an uneasy twinge in her split flesh, in the atmosphere, and in the sand underfoot. The spell has the power to shake the world, even in broad daylight, and she winces, waiting to see what will happen next.

"Stop that," Sam snaps.

Castiel does not stop that. He keeps going, racing through the words in the ancient language, and Meg hears herself moan deep in her throat. " _Make it stop_ ," she hisses, and she isn't sure if it's the scorching heat of Castiel's grief that she is begging to have relief from or the power of the spell itself, but it seems that Sam can't bear it either because he leans down and slaps Castiel across the face.

Almost before the sound of the blow dies away, there is an explosion of movement as Castiel bolts upright from his seated position, leaving Dean unguarded on the sand. Meg finds her gaze pulled to the body again, studying the way Dean's head tilts up to the sky, his mouth canting open, his lips cracked from the salt. _Dean's worries are over_ , she thinks. Dean has bitten the dust, bought the farm, gone to the big room downstairs, and he's not coming back this time because she has a gut feeling that not all of the angels and all of the spells can put this Winchester back together again.

Sam doesn't move an inch as Castiel rises to meet him and there is the faint suggestion of the slap on the angel's cheek, the red tingling through his pale skin. His eyes have gone from grieving to feral.

"You should have let me go with him," he says, his voice reverberating from his throat in a deep, bone-shaking growl. "If you're not going to help me, you should have let me die with him. I thought you were his _brother_ , Sam."

If there was a single pressure point Castiel could hit on to make Sam explode, this is it, Meg knows, and she assesses Sam's face, the clench of his jaw as he leans further over Castiel, a charge that threatens violence building between them.

Meg can stitch together countless moments when her life intersected with the Winchesters, and during all of them she didn't fully appreciate the effect Dean's presence had, whether it was on John or Sam, and now on the angel. Without the general apathy of her demonhood blinding her, she observes, with insight and sudden, unexpected sadness, everything that Dean had been, the various roles he had filled. He was a keystone, a linchpin, the point upon which a fulcrum turns, the central hub without which things disintegrate and fall apart, and it can't be more clear than in the tableau that plays out as she watches.

She limps closer, curious to see what happens despite herself, the foot of her crippled leg furrowing a snaking trail in the sand.

"For Dean's sake, I'll pretend I didn't hear that," Sam says, icy cold.

"For Dean's sake you should have tried harder to reach him," Castiel yells.

And that's it – there is a flurry of motion so rapid that Meg's brain has to sprint to catch up with it; the sudden fast pull of punches as both men lurch into each other with flying fists and bared teeth, their eyes gone dark with anger and hurt, wolves howling on the empty stretch of beach with Dean's body a mute testament between them.

Knuckles trade off against their faces, and where they shuffle in their tight boxing ring, their feet dance dangerously close to the corpse. Meg sinks to her knees, swallowing a screech of pain as she reaches for Dean's body, and she can't say what impulse causes her to lean forward to pull it to safety. This man was squirting holy water in her face not that long ago, and taking no small delight in the burning of her skin.

"Soldiers deserve better," she mutters, as she threads her hands under his arms and pulls him up and away from the fray, and she tells herself that is the whole of it. They shared the same rack once upon a time, in another land, and this man looked down at her with something like understanding and pity as he unstrapped her from Crowley's torture table after the demon inside Christian Campbell smoked and died. They might have been on different sides of a war, but when life has passed, the boundaries of enemy and friend are no longer so clearly defined. They seem small and trivial when she stares down at the empty vessel that was once meant for Michael.

Above her are the thud of impact and the sound of thick grunts as Sam breaks Castiel's nose and gore comes flooding down the angel's face; the answering gasp and cry from Castiel as he sends several punches into Sam's kidneys so that Sam buckles over, heaving in air. He erupts back up, clamping his fingers to Castiel's arm and swinging him around violently, into a chokehold that binds them to each other. Both of them are breathing hard, like cattle in a stampede.

"My brother is dead and you broke my fucking wall, and you think I'm going to deal with this all by myself?" Sam hollers, his face creased ugly with fury. "You fucker! You selfish fucking bastard! It's real easy to die and leave the mess for the living, but you aren't doing this the easy way, Cas. You're doing this with me. We're doing this _together_."

Sam lets him go and Castiel stumbles a few feet away, to where the sand is splotched with blood from a split on Sam's cheek, and from Castiel's own broken nose. He reaches up and fingers the break with a hiss, before he shifts the bone back into place with an audible crack. The two men breathe hard and fast in tandem as they regard each other with an awkward, nervous silence, the tension too thick to break with words alone until Castiel finally does, leaning with his hands on his knees and spitting blood into the ground.

"I should be thanking you. You saved me from Hell," he croaks, in what Meg assumes is the closest he can manage to an apology.

Sam exhales a long, steadying breath, but his reply is dull and exhausted. "Yeah. I guess I did, in a way."

"But you left my soul behind, Sam."

For the first time in a long time, Castiel's voice regresses back into his angelic monotone and the contrast highlights just how far his journey has taken him to all levels of human and angel and back again. He turns and looks down at Meg, where she has dragged Dean a few yards from their altercation. His stare is empty and desolate as he rests it on Dean and hunkers down opposite, his hair wild and messy, and clogged with sand, blood oozing from his nose and from a split in his eyebrow. Meg studies him in silence until he lifts his gaze to her, his lips pressed into a thin, angry line.

"Thank you," he whispers.

His gratitude makes her uncomfortable, and she looks away and down at the dead body between them both.

"There's some magic left, you know," Castiel adds dryly.

He reaches across the corpse that divides them and before Meg can react, his fingers are pressed to the sore and bruised calf of her broken leg. His touch sends fireworks through her nerves and she can't look at what he is doing, opens her mouth to scream – but then the agony shuts off abruptly, as if it was never there, as if all her nerve endings were silenced at once. She opens her eyes and the swollen, deformed limb is recognizable again; the rent in the skin where the broken bone pushed through healed over and the pain gone with it. She replays the angel's last words, and her eyes narrow as she looks from her leg to Dean Winchester's lax, dead features and ravaged body, and then back to Castiel once more.

"Magic enough to fix him, to—"

"No," Castiel cuts her off, biting the word out as if it hurts. "Not enough to do what matters most. His soul is gone where I can no longer follow, and without his soul he would not be fixed. It would not be him, and I…" His voice dies for a second before he swallows. "I would not do that to him. Or his brother."

Meg thinks she sees something in his eyes as he speaks, a flash of something that might be guilt, but she isn't sure. Movement from above is a distraction as Sam kneels down beside them, cutting a dark shadow over his brother, and by the time she looks back to Castiel he has collapsed in on himself, shoulders brushing Sam's. He doesn't seem to care or mind, regardless of the fight from seconds ago. All the animosity is forgotten, and Sam sets a hand on Dean's shoulder, withdrawing into his own private thoughts for a few moments before he swipes a hand across his eyes and speaks.

"You have any mojo left to take us back, Cas?" he asks. "I thought you were—"

"Running on empty?" the angel says with a weary bitterness. "I know. It cost me to fix her leg, but if we wait long enough, I can take us home."

"What the hell went wrong anyway?" Meg asks Sam, after brief silence has passed, but Sam's eyes are vacant, and he doesn't answer her.

Castiel stays with Dean.

Several times Sam attempts to get him to leave the body, and Meg grows tired of the pleading and Castiel's mute obstinacy, and wanders down to the tideline, where she finds several unopened water bottles and a pack of sodden bagels washed up on the shore. She lines them up in a row, wades into the lapping surf to fish out what looks like a fabric bag so she can carry the provisions more easily. Her hand closes around something solid concealed within it, and she picks at the coarse material, peers inside it to see the dull luster of old metal. She barks out a dry, mirthless laugh as she drops the water bottles and food in beside it, and makes her way back to their makeshift camp.

Sam is sitting with his back against a large rock, his legs sprawled out carelessly. He's staring at the sea, and he doesn't acknowledge Meg's return. She sits down a foot or so away, reaches inside the bag and retrieves the bagels and the water bottles one by one, before leaning over to drop the cloth bundle on Sam's lap. "Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes," she remarks, and when he drifts red-rimmed eyes over to focus on her, she nods down at her salvage. "The mighty sword of truth and justice. No sign of the holy grail though."

Sam casts his eyes down to examine the bag but he doesn't open it up, just shoves it off his thighs, then stretches across to scoop up one of the bottles of water. He stares over at Castiel for a moment before pushing up and ambling over, almost leisurely, to place the bottle beside the angel. He mutters words too low for Meg to hear, but Castiel shakes his head and he will not speak, not yet.

Once Sam has slumped back down in his spot, Meg unscrews the cap on one of the bottles and sets it down next to him. Ahead of them, the golden ball of the sun is sinking fast as the night closes in. The prospect of darkness is forbidding with the trees behind them whispering threats as they rustle in the breeze, and Meg finds her gaze drawn to Castiel, his head bowed and Dean Winchester still cradled in his arms. "We should burn the body," she hisses. "Leaving it intact is an invitation to trouble." She jerks a thumb back into the jungle that borders the beach. "There's no telling what could be in there still."

Sam is scratching and plucking convulsively at his chest through the fabric of his t-shirt, but he freezes, looks at her for a long moment, and Meg can almost hear the gears in his head grind as he registers what she said. He winces, his face creasing with distaste for a few seconds, distaste that might be aimed whatever could be watching from the woods, or might be a reaction to her suggestion.

Meg's eyes slant, unbidden, to the cloth-wrapped blade Sam could use to end her for once and for all, at his other hand, curled on his thigh and perilously close to the weapon. But she remembers the way he fought inside her when she wore him, the way he protested her crimes when she used his hands to maim and murder, the way he screamed in rage and horror when she drove his fist into his brother's dazed face. Even if she knows his integrity is his strength and could be her death sentence, she also knows it is his weakness, and that it can save her. "For all we know, the body of the Righteous Man could be like a homing beacon to that thing's drones, and how can you and I fight them?" she adds quickly. "We're defenseless human beings, Sam…you and me both."

He frowns and Meg thinks she can see in his eyes that he has taken the bait, thinks she can sense his tension easing by tiny increments. "We'd have to gather a heck of a lot of wood for the pyre," she continues cautiously, and she can see Sam's jaw twitching like he's chewing the inside of his mouth.

"We'd have to distract Cas," he murmurs absently, because he's going over the logistics and Meg can finally relax at his acquiescence. "Separate him from the body. Restrain him so he doesn't put out the fire."

Meg continues in this odd, uneasy truce that seems to have been reached between them in the temporary insanity of his grief. "Could he put us out of commission? He isn't fully charged…if we piss him off and he uses up any more of his juice, we could be stuck here for days." As she speaks, it suddenly occurs to her that being marooned on this godforsaken beach after burning Dean's body would be fully dependent on them surviving the inevitable distress that would follow, and it's like Sam read her mind.

"If we piss him off, being stuck here would be the least of our worries," he says. "And if he didn't kill us for it, he might not help get us home afterwards. Look at him…"

Meg slants her eyes over to the hunched figure. Castiel is gazing up at the stars now, with Dean's head in his lap. He's rocking slightly, and his fingers are stroking Dean's cheek as the song of the waves plays out beyond them. If there is a time for arguing over how to dispose of Dean, it's going to have to happen on home turf. Castiel is too raw to deal with it.

Meg gathers a small pile of driftwood and sticks from the treeline anyway, and uses it to make a bonfire, cursing as she manages to burn her fingers on a set of waxed matches she finds in one of the bags.

"What, not a girl scout, Meg?" Sam pokes acidly. "Always prepared?"

Uneasy truce is right, but Meg is diplomatic, bites her tongue and doesn't respond as she steps back from the growing blaze. They take a moment to admire the licking flames and enjoy their different perspectives on Hell that the fire reminds them of. After a moment, Meg hears the slosh of liquid and glances beside her to see Sam lifting a stainless steel flask to his lips. "Since when did you have that?" she asks.

He points dark, resigned eyes at her. "It was Dean's. I found it in the surf. It belonged to John, went with him to 'Nam."

Meg licks her lips, ventures, "Can a friend be persuaded to share?"

Sam's gaze doesn't waver. "Sure."

He passes her the flask. She spins the cap and takes a moment to quietly toast Dean Winchester before she knocks back a swig, and, " _Fuck_ ," she curses, spluttering brackish water.

"You didn't really think we kept alcohol in there, did you?" Sam smirks. "Holy water for the family Winchester."

Meg considers saying something snide, but rolls her eyes instead. They fall into silence then, and she sees Sam darting sharp, speculative glances Castiel's way, as if he hopes the angel will nod off in the darkness for long enough for him to pull Dean out of his grasp and set him ablaze.

But Meg knows instinctively that none of them will sleep tonight, and that Dean won't burn.

She must sleep after all, because she comes round to the glow of sunrise and Sam looming over her, neurotic and babbling, hands out towards Castiel where he stands beside Dean's body.

"Let me just – I don't want Bobby to see him like this. He needs something on him, covering him."

As Meg pushes up to stand, Sam fumbles to pull his t-shirt over his head, and she's taking a moment to admire the ripple of toned muscle when something catches a glint of light in the sun. It reflects off Sam's chest and under his chin, a golden spot, and Castiel frowns and steps closer, his hand flying up to hook a finger under the amulet that hangs on a cord around Sam's neck. As he stares at its strange horns and stylized face, Sam curses, and that can't be good. Meg sighs and moves a few feet away again.

"You _knew_?" Castiel whispers, and his eyes go glassy with tears. "You _knew_ he planned this?"

Sam shakes his head rapidly, fumbles out words. "No, Cas, wait a minute, there was no plan, it—"

"Don't lie to me, Sam," Castiel chokes out. "It was planned. He used the sigil against me so I wouldn't stop him. And now this…you didn't have time to take that off him, and I haven't left his body. The only reason you'd have it is if he gave it to you before he did it." He lets the amulet fall from his fingers, backs away unsteadily. "I thought he tricked you too," he mutters dully. "But you _knew_ he was leaving me to walk into the fire. You kept saying the words. You let him do it. You _knew_."

Meg watches as Castiel turns toward the ocean with his hands at his head and his hair tufted between his fingers, seemingly unable to process the multitude of betrayals that descend upon him, one upon the other. Meg wonders if he's contemplating not taking them back at all; if he's considering just walking into the sea to drown himself in the dark and the deep, but finally he turns back, his eyes red and watery.

Sam colors, and he doesn't meet the angel's agonized look. He sinks down to his knees and gently lifts his brother up into the crook of his arm, slipping his t-shirt over Dean's head as it lolls against his thigh. The body is still oddly floppy, the primary flaccidity that follows death not having worn off for whatever reason, and Meg drops to her haunches and sticks out a supportive hand herself when it threatens to slump back onto the sand.

Sam lays his brother back down, picks up the cloth-wrapped sword, and stands. When Castiel makes an inarticulate sound and lurches towards them, there is an instant when Meg wonders if he might intend casting them into the ocean to drown. But he squats and hefts Dean into his arms, eyes flashing.

In the next second, Meg feels freezing cold air blast her face.

First there is the high-altitude oxygen-suck and turbulence of flight, and then there is the sudden impact of terra firma, and there never has been any warning of when to brace for landing, when to bend at the knees so the aftershock of boots smack-banging on solid ground doesn't jar its way up the spine in an uncomfortable grate and shimmy of vertebrae.

Then there is bitter cold against Sam's naked back, the vapor of warm breath in freezing air, and dogs, a mad, frenzied howling and baying, discordant noise that has Sam thinking, _hellhounds_. He swings his head around frantically to see them streaking towards him in the pinkish haze of dawn, a pack of ten or fifteen mutts of various sizes, and over their din he can hear shouting coming from the house.

"Shit," he yelps, and he backs away as Meg dodges around him adroitly and clatters up the porch steps to hammer at the door. Castiel doesn't react, seems rooted to the spot next to Sam, staring into the distance, Dean cradled limp in his arms. Sam crowds into him, pushes him closer to the porch, hisses, "Get up the steps," but he isn't sure if Castiel can really hear him at this point, blockaded behind his grief as he is.

The first of the dogs is nearing the steps now, while Meg still batters her fists on the wood and hollers for entry. It skids to a stop a couple of feet away, panting and snarling, and then it stops, cocks its head in what appears to be a more measured threat assessment, and whines.

"Cheney?" Sam gapes. It is, he's sure of it, but the dog is as skinny as a junkyard cur, its flanks hollow and its ribs visible. The rest of the pack is milling about in the lot, yipping and barking in excitement, but Cheney pads up to Sam and sidles past him, nudges its nose on Castiel's thigh, whines again, and licks Dean's hand where it hangs suspended in mid-air.

Sam tears his eyes away from that, strides the few feet it takes him to get to the door, throwing the sword onto the porch swing so he can thunder both fists on the wood. "Bobby, open up," he says hoarsely, and when he listens he can hear a soft rumble of conversation inside.

"You ain't fooling me."

The response is muffled but it's low and harsh, ramps up to controlled anger as it continues. "Whatever the fuck you are, revenant, tulpa – get off my land. House is warded and we're armed."

Beside Sam, Meg rolls her eyes. "Some welcome party."

But Sam ignores her, because none of this makes sense. He steps back, catches sight of a metallic shine on the inside of the window overlooking the porch. Corrugated aluminum, as far as he can make out in the gloom, and it looks like there are hurricane shutters secured to the inside of the frame. As Sam swings his gaze back out to scope the lot, the feeling of wrongness magnifies in the length of time it takes him to take in the frigid air, the naked trees, the patches of snow and the ice crystals gleaming on the Impala, sitting where Dean left her before they headed out of here just over three weeks ago, when it had been summer.

He turns back to Castiel, asks, "Did you bring us to the right reality?" but the angel stares through him.

Sam drops his gaze to where his brother's head is resting on Castiel's shoulder. Dean's eyelids have slipped open and his stare is fixed and unseeing, and _twelve hours_ , Sam finds himself thinking. His brother has been dead for twelve hours, give or take, and even if Dean's body is still lax and floppy where it reclines in Castiel's arms, rigor mortis will set in sooner or later.

Like it had the first time he buried his brother.

And Sam has had enough, and he brings his hands up to his face, covers his eyes and thinks he might just sink down to his ass and sit on the ground until he freezes to death out here.

Or he can handle it, like Dean wanted him to.

He exhales, once, twice. "Come on," he says shortly, and he snags a handful of Castiel's t-shirt at the scruff of his neck, shepherds him down the steps much as he'd guided him up them. The dogs growl, but it seems like Cheney is the boss of them and they follow at a respectful distance as Sam steers Castiel around and onto the path that leads to the back of the property, to the autoshop and the yard full of wrecks. He's thinking logically, he tells himself, as he runs through it all in his mind. Burning his brother would be best, he knows, but he'd have to travel miles to find somewhere he can get a decent pyre going without the local fire department turning up, and—

"Uh-huh."

He wheels around at the crunch of boots on ice behind him. Meg, following along a few feet behind them, and she's eyeing him curiously and nodding.

Thinking out loud, then. Sam clears his throat. "On the other hand, burning him here is out of the question."

She quirks an eyebrow but doesn't comment.

"Well look around you," he says defensively, and he waves his hand haphazardly in the direction they came. "A lot of these junkers are probably still soused in oil and gasoline, and I don't want to burn Bobby's house down." He pauses, thinks darkly that the old bastard might at least show his face if a stray cinder set the roof alight.

 _Burial then_ , he thinks, and he ignores the way his heart is flopping painfully in his chest, ignores his breathlessness. "We bury him," he declares. "With a shit-ton of wards to make sure he stays put and nothing can get to him, because fuck knows I don't want anything using his meatsuit to terrorize me if I can help it."

They're coming up to the hangar that houses Bobby's auto shop, and Sam slows Castiel to a halt. "Stay there," he orders, and Castiel dutifully obeys as Sam ponders the canoe Bobby has propped up against the siding. The craft is a two-man job, a twelve-foot long Trapper, and Sam remembers how Dean would slide it in the back of Bobby's truck and drive them to Lake Oahe to camp and fish. He thinks it'll—

_"—fight you, Sammy…it'll fight you. Don't use the reel to pull it in, you need to pump and lift the rod. Keep it tight."_

_Dean's face is all lit up there next to Sam, and he's leaning in now, so the canoe bobs a little bit from side to side. "Is he running?"_

_Sam nods, can feel the fish swimming away with the line, and Dean's hand is steady on his, his brother's fingers nimble on the drag setting._

_"You want about four pounds on there. If he runs again just let him go, he'll get tired soon enough." A smile splits Dean's face, and it's pleasure, pride. "We'll be frying up bass for dinner, kiddo…and it'll—_

—do, and Sam smiles, thinks Dean would probably appreciate being buried like a Viking in his longship, as he heaves the canoe down.

"Viking burial. Hell, yes." But the seats will get in the way, he realizes. "Chainsaw," he tells Castiel, and he knows Bobby has one hanging up in the shop so he pushes open the door, scrabbles for the light switch. It clicks impotently, and it's still dark in there. "Change the damn light bulb, old man," Sam shouts back towards the house, and he shakes his head. "There's a fucking service pit in there," he spits at Meg, and she looks bemused. "Anyone could fall into it if there are no lights," he elaborates, and she nods slowly.

"Oh. Okay."

It's lucky he knows where the saw is, and Sam picks his way over to it and back carefully. "Last time I used this was when that tree came down, remember?" he reminisces to Castiel, and he chuckles. "Round about the time you learned to bake pie. Maybe you can bake us one after we get this done, because I'm working up a hell of an appetite."

Castiel is mute, but Meg snorts in a disbelieving way.

"What?" Sam demands, and she lifts up her hands in surrender.

"This is clearly your way of dealing, Sam," she says neutrally. "I'm saying nothing."

"You're damn right I'm dealing," he snaps. "Someone has to. I'm handling this. Is anyone else? Well?" After a moment's silence he feels vindicated. "No one is handling this like me."

Meg stares him out, and her scrutiny is measured. "No they aren't," she concedes.

"You're damn right," Sam says again. The adrenaline is buzzing in him now, so that Meg's judgmental expression doesn't really bother him. He feels almost satisfied, triumphant, feels like he's achieving something here. He's _handling it_ , even if cold sweat is trickling its clammy way down his spine and he's shivering, and he pulls the starter cord with a hand that he abstractedly notices is shaking. The machine revs throatily, and the canoe seats are no match for the blade, splintering in seconds. Sam sets the chainsaw down and studies the result critically. "You think he'll fit in there, Cas?"

The angel's stare is as blank as it has been since the beach, still as blank as Dean's is, and Sam sighs out his frustration. "One fucking crisis too many and he crumples." He swivels to look at the woman again. "But not me. I'm handling this. Do you think he'll fit in there?"

She nods, very slowly. "And then some."

"But we need some sort of cover, else we might as well just throw the body in the hole as is." Sam rubs at his jaw. "Wood, I need some wood…" Lumber, from when Bobby had him and Dean fix the fence at the back of the lot the summer before last, and it's right where he remembers them stacking it, in the shed.

"I found the shovel and pick ax as well," he celebrates as he emerges with the tools and an armload of the pine planks, and he gestures at the canoe. "Can you haul that along? Just grab the mooring line."

Meg nods, even if it's a little doubtful. She bends to snag the rope, tries the load on for size, and the canoe skids along the frost and ice easily.

"Now we're talking," Sam crows, and he splays his hand out on Castiel's back, pushes the angel into motion. "We'll put him near your Christmas tree," he soothes as Castiel stumbles placidly along just ahead of him. "We dug up the ground there already, so it'll be easier to turn over now. That sound reasonable?"

Still more silence, and it's getting damned annoying. "I'm handling this," Sam chides his friend. "I'm the only one who seems to be fucking handling it. Jesus."

From a few feet further back, over the grind of the boat along the ground, Meg calls Sam's name softly and then slants her eyes back towards the house. "Movement up there."

Sam's head is throbbing, his throat is sore, and swallowing past the dryness and constriction there is getting less and less easy. There is a void in him and he wants a drink, not just beer but something that will burn and corrode his belly, and blur the sharp edges of all this before blasting him to insensibility and dreamless sleep. And he will find it, after he _handles it_ , and he forces his exhaustion away. "I'm handling this first," he barks out again decisively, and his voice sounds rough and raw.

The tree is just ahead and Sam doesn't pause as he circles around Castiel, throws the pick ax down, and sets the blade of the shovel against the ground, just like he did when he and his—

_—brother have been digging for a half-hour now, and Sam is as unconvinced of the success of this as he ever was, finds himself casting dubious looks at the tree even while Dean throws up clods of earth enthusiastically._

_"Dean, you know that when we plant this thing it'll either die or topple over, don't you? It's the wrong time of year to do this."_

_Dean's eyes are bright, his face somehow younger and less drawn than Sam has seen it in weeks, and he's swinging the pick ax with gusto, putting his back into it and grunting with satisfaction as it spears the icy ground. "It'll work," he says cheerfully. "It's my lucky tree. I want to keep it, so does Cas." He pauses for a moment, straightens up and arches backwards with a groan, rubbing at the small of his back. He glances at his wristwatch, looks over towards the house. "Come on," he urges. "He'll be waking up soon, I want him to see it when he looks out the window."_

_His expression is secretive and pleased when he looks at Sam again, and it reminds Sam that he hovered in the doorway to Bobby's study on his way up to bed Christmas night and caught them, Castiel slumped on Dean's chest as he slept and Dean gazing at him with gentle awe, as if he was sacred. The way Castiel always stares at Dean, Sam realizes, and it hits him that it's because something happened while they were away on their Christmas tree hunt, something that has eased his brother's stress and made him laugh again, made him happy. And that is a good thing. So Sam smiles, settles the blade of the shovel against the earth and—_

—pushes at it, putting his whole weight on it, but the ground is rock-hard permafrost because somehow it turned into winter in the last week, and Sam still hasn't puzzled his way through that riddle.

"Pick ax might be better," he decides, and he throws the shovel down, reaches for the other tool. He ignores the figures that are ranging closer, guns raised, ignores the way Meg stands there with her hand out to catch the flask Bobby throws her, ignores the old man's scathing _have a drink on me_ , as he hefts the pick ax and slams it down into the soil. It penetrates the top few inches before it bounces back up, and, "See?" Sam cheers, "now we're getting somewhere."

He brings it up and around and down again, again, again, and he pays no mind to the fact that it's Mira standing alongside Bobby, pays no mind to Meg rolling up her sleeve and cutting into her arm with a blade Sam knows is consecrated silver as Mira takes her through the standard tick-list of precautionary tests. He pays no mind to the way Bobby is walking towards Castiel on slow, stiff, unwilling legs, pays no mind to the old man's choked-out denials, pays no mind to the great big, fat tears streaming down Bobby's cheeks as he reaches his hand out to lay it on Dean's face.

Sam pays no mind to any of this because he's handling it, burying his brother, but—

_—there is no time for stitching wounds, and the sheet is stained with rusty brown patches of dried-in blood. The air inside the car is thick with the rank piss-shit odor of violent death, combined with the smell of Sam's own vomit, spattered down his shirt, and with the eye-watering stench of his brother's decomposing flesh, because it's hot and even with the windows open the stink of putrefaction lingers._

_Bobby hasn't said a word since he fell to his knees beside Sam in the lake of blood Dean made as he bled out. They loaded their burden into the car in dead silence and now they sit there, staring dead ahead, mute but somehow expectant, as if they think Dean will break the hush of their loss by sitting up with a grin and telling them it was a joke._

_It isn't a joke. Sam really did see his brother torn apart, and he's clamping his hand to his nose at the smell, the smell. And maybe he said it out loud, because Bobby takes the next exit, drives them out into the sticks. They do it there, hammering together strips of the pine they stopped off at Home Depot for before Dean started to rot, and forcing his body down into the box because it is already rigid with cadaveric spasm._

_Just before Bobby nails down the lid, Sam reaches for the amulet, and then they dig, and the soil is summer soft and breaks easily under the spike of—_

—the pick ax isn't really doing it if Sam is honest, and he throws it down with a curse, twists around and runs a shaking hand through his hair.

"Backhoe," he snaps out at Bobby as the old man shakes his head, but Bobby doesn't seem to notice him. He's talking to Castiel now, his hand on the angel's cheek instead of Dean's, and Castiel is finally focusing on Bobby, and his eyes aren't empty any more: they're aching with hurt, and shock, and disbelief, and he's weeping.

"Backhoe," Sam says again, and he smacks his fist into his opposite palm for emphasis, wonders why he never thought of it earlier. And what do you know, Bobby's mini-Terramite is parked conveniently close, complete with auger and excavator shovel, and Sam trots over there, maneuvers himself into the seat. The keys are right where Bobby always leaves them, and Sam cranks the engine, shakes his head at the labored, unproductive grind that results. The fuel gauge is on zero, and "Fucking typical," he grates out as he slides out of the machine and stalks back over to where Bobby is taking a few steps in his direction.

"Does no one maintain this fucking place any more now Dean is dead?" Sam yells as Bobby comes to a halt, and he stabs viciously back towards the auto shop. "There's no light bulb in there, and it could cause an accident. The place is crawling with wild fucking dogs, and I need to use the fucking backhoe so I can bury my brother, and the fucking needle is on empty."

Bobby's voice is calm and gentle, understanding. "We can find some gas somewhere, Sam, but why don't you let us handle this—"

"No," Sam cuts him off, in a way he knows is damned aggressive, because he sees Bobby flinch and flick his eyes over to Mira as she comes closer. "I'm handling it," he insists, even though he knows he isn't sucking in enough breath to give his voice the force it needs, even though he can feel something inside him start to give way and rip apart. "I'm handling it," he claims, even though he feels weak at the knees and everything is pressing in around him. "I'm handling it," he lies, because it has been a lie all along and he's falling forward into Bobby's arms, and Bobby is collapsing to the ground with him.

"I want to sleep," Sam hears himself choke out. "I don't want to bury my brother. I want to sleep. I want something that'll help me sleep."

Bobby's answer is gruff in Sam's ear, and his words hang suspended in the air like doom. "I'll handle this, son."

There is a shriek, far off and muffled, sobbed-out anguish that penetrates the thick, soft blanket of drugged slumber, and Sam blinks blearily. It's dark, inside and out if the moonlight seeping in through the curtains is anything to go by.

The cry sounds again, different from nightmares, and there is such sorrow and hopelessness in it that Sam can feel tears spring. _Castiel_ , and Dean isn't there for the angel now. Sam sighs, starts to shift in the bed and throw off the covers, but there is a warm body stretched up behind him, an arm snaking in to wrap around him and hold him in place, keeping him safe.

"Bobby is taking care of him," Mira whispers. "Now sleep."

She kisses the back of Sam's neck and he remembers that she is the one, and there is a sort of peace in this feeling of security. He turns himself around, pulls her into him, tangles his fingers in her hair. "You're the one," he breathes against her mouth. "You're the one, and that's the last thing I said to my brother. He was happy about it. And I'll be alright."

She kisses him, a brief press of lips. "Sleep, love," she repeats. "We're safe here."

The distant lament lulls Sam back to unconsciousness.

_It should have been me. But Dean went there. He went in my place_.

Bobby jolts back to awareness at seven-fifteen in the morning according to his wristwatch, and he can still hear Castiel sobbing the words out to him before the angel finally loosed his hold on consciousness just after midnight. The torment that led up to that emotional collapse means Bobby isn't surprised to find himself staring at an empty couch, the quilts he placed over Castiel heaped messily on the floor.

He curses himself for the exhaustion that had him lower his guard, yawns because four hours sleep will never be enough, stretches so his back creaks and his shoulders pop. He leans into his hand for a moment then, because he's alone, finally alone, with no one depending on him. "Dean," he whispers. "Son. Goddammit." He sniffs, scrubs at his eyes, grits his teeth and sets his jaw, because he has to hold this together somehow. There can be no climbing into the bottle like he did after New Harmony.

A chill has set in while Bobby dozed in his chair. He pushes up, crosses into the kitchen and bends down to feed a couple of split logs into the stove. As he straightens, he sighs at what he can see through the window.

He waits a few minutes for the old copper kettle on the stovetop to heat up, pours what's left of last night's reheated coffee into the old Thermos flask he takes with him when he's walking the perimeter to check the wards are still intact. He pulls on his jacket, and slings one of the quilts over his shoulder.

The dogs are variously sitting and laying in a haphazard semi-circle around Castiel and a couple of them yip and whine at Bobby's approach, but Castiel is dumb and unreactive as Bobby drapes the quilt around his shoulders and sets the Thermos down at his knee.

"Dean wouldn't want this for you, son," Bobby begins as he lowers himself to sit opposite, and for a moment the tight rein he's keeping on himself flaps loose and he flounders, helpless to stop the sting of tears that threatens. He breathes deep, steadies himself. "You said he took your place, and—"

"Did you know that the word grief comes from the Latin _gravis_ , Bobby?" Castiel interrupts him listlessly. "It means heavy."

Bobby didn't know that, but he reasons that he knows grief. He thinks on his own now, _Karen_ , and the hurt and loss are still there, buried as deep as he buried her ashes the second time he killed her. "I've been where you are," he says. "Sam has too. This is different for him, he lost his brother, you lost your…" He stops, doesn't even really know how he was going to describe Dean. "But Sam was fixing to marry his girl out in California," he continues awkwardly. "So like I said. We've both been where you are."

Castiel's gaze drifts slowly over to focus on Bobby, and it is as dull and devastated as it was when Bobby took Dean from him and laid him in the grave. "Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows," he murmurs. "According to your William Shakespeare."

In his mind's eye, Bobby sees himself that first time, lost in sorrow that wrapped him as tightly as if he were stitched into his own burial shroud. "Shakespeare was right," he rasps out as Castiel blinks at him. "After my wife…it was like it suffocated me, like it was a blanket of sadness and regret, and it was so thick I couldn't see beyond it. But over time it started to fray, and it wore away in patches. And light came through." He shrugs, a minimal roll of his shoulders. "I guess you could say I adapted."

Castiel flinches, his eyes widen, and the quilt slips away down his arms as he sits up straighter. "My grief is all I have," he reproaches, his voice low. "It is my lifeline to him, and you ask me to set it aside and move on? You think I will gain perspective on my loss? You think I will _adapt_?"

His words are drawn out and deliberate, incongruously polite in the way they always are when Castiel thinks someone is being vaguely stupid, but the air is suddenly charged in a way that makes Bobby pull back involuntarily and defend himself. "No, that's not what I—"

"He is my second self, my soul, and I was designed to be with him. This emptiness I feel can't be filled, ever." Castiel's face is fracturing into lines of utter distress as he cuts Bobby off and keeps going. "My dreams are dead, all of them. My hope is dead. My future is dead."

His loss is stark and appalling in that moment, so much so that it takes Bobby a long few minutes to find a response. "Still and all, I'm here," he says eventually, and he knows it isn't anywhere near adequate. "I'm something you can count on when you're falling apart. And I'm solid."

It's like he never spoke, and Castiel is staring into space again, unseeing as he whispers, "I told him I would always keep him safe."

Bobby feels ill and useless as he pushes up. "You don't sit out here at night," he says quietly. "That's one of the rules." He turns and makes his way back towards the house.

The next time Sam wakes, it's day outside and he's alone in the bed, blankets and quilts piled over him. He huffs out the foggy feeling in his head, turns over onto his back. _My brother is dead_ , he thinks, but the recall is dull and blunted.

He can hear noises downstairs, and he pushes up into cold that goosepimples his arms, reminding him of the odd dissonance of returning to wintry frost. He swings his legs off the bed, stands and shuffles to the window to pull the curtain aside and confirm he didn't imagine it. He didn't – Bobby's lot is patched with snow, much as it was last night, and Sam stares across the piled up junkers to the end, near the fence where his brother's tree stands, sees a lone figure sitting under it.

Swallowing past the sudden constriction in his throat, Sam drags his eyes away and pads out onto the landing to the bathroom, shivering in the chill. He flips the light switch, and nothing, like in the autoshop. _Power cut_ , he thinks. Which likely means the well pump isn't working, and sure enough, when he twists the faucet the tap splutters out a few drops of water into his cupped hands before the stream dies away and a distant clanking signals air in the pipes. The dregs are barely enough to splash his face, but it wakes him up enough to clue into the fact that his bladder is about to pop, and he pisses loud and long. There's a bucket of gritty water from Bobby's rain barrel next to the toilet, the usual deal when the pump is down, and he sloshes a couple of gallons into the pan before he makes his way back to the bedroom. There are clean clothes in the bureau where he left them, and he dresses himself as swiftly as he can manage when his body still feels worn out and battered.

Bobby is in the kitchen, stirring a pot of something he's cooking on the old wood stove he fires up any time there's an outage. When he looks back at Sam, his face is pale, and he's red-eyed. "I was about to wake you," he says quietly. "I got some oatmeal on the go."

Sam pulls out the chair, slumps himself down in it. He's starving, he realizes, but he feels oddly disconnected from the gripe and pang of his empty belly. "Power cut?" he asks, nodding at the stove.

"Something like that." Bobby slops the oatmeal out into a bowl, tops it off with some milk from a covered jug. "Fresh from the cow," he says as he sets it down in front of Sam. "I got myself a cow. You'll need to learn how to milk her."

The concept is so out of leftfield that Sam gapes a little as Bobby snags an oven mitt from the countertop so he can slop steaming hot coffee from an old kettle into two mugs. He sits down opposite Sam, slides one of the mugs across. "Coffee. We brew it up a couple of times a day, keep it hot on the stovetop best we can."

It tastes damn good going down, and Sam can already feel the buzz of caffeine in his system as he gulps the hot liquid. He wipes his mouth, eyes Bobby uncertainly. "Dean," he starts, and Bobby visibly winces, lifts his hand.

"I got the jist of it…managed to get some sense out of Cas."

Sam thinks about what went down in the lot after they touched down, and he swallows thickly. "Bobby, I'm sorry about losing it out there—"

"No," Bobby cuts him off, and his eyes turn bleak. "I never want to hear you say you're sorry about that, son. You don't have to be." The words come out of him slowly then, like it hurts him to say them. "I buried Dean. We managed to scavenge some gasoline for the backhoe…laid him in the Trapper, like you wanted. A Viking funeral. You kept saying that's how it should be. He's warded, nothing will get to him."

His brother is dead and under the ground. This loss is final, there is no get-out-of-jail-free card this time, and the reality of it strikes Sam dumb for a moment.

"You alright?" Bobby prods, and he grimaces as Sam looks back up to meet his gaze. "Stupid question," the old man concedes. "But after the last time…"

Bobby lets it hang there, and Sam takes a moment to think about the question, about the last time. There is a hollow feeling inside him, like there was then, and he wonders how he can fill it, how he can restore some semblance of meaning and direction to his life. He didn't manage to before, but maybe this time it will be different, because this time _he_ is different. "I'm not alright, Bobby," he replies honestly. "But I think I will be. And I'm not going anywhere this time."

Bobby swallows hard, nods, and then he looks away from Sam for a moment, over towards the window. "Cas is out there. Sat out there all day yesterday too, while you slept. I took a blanket out to him. He won't eat." His voice turns barbed then, the kind of sharp belligerence that Sam knows is a sign the old man is fighting for control of himself. "He's a mess, keeps saying your brother was his second self or some crap like that. I was up all night with him." His tone goes pointed. "We're going to have to watch him."

Sam glances towards the window, but he doesn't want to think about Castiel. "I don't understand why it's so cold," he detours. "It's July."

Bobby rubs at his beard, seems to be selecting his words carefully. "There's things you need to know," he says at last.

It's relatively innocuous and it shouldn't have panic spiking in Sam at all after the last few days, but the weight of it is so damned heavy he can already feel it dragging him even lower than he is. He swallows through his unease and puts on his game-face. "Go on."

"You didn't leave for Rio two weeks ago. You left six months ago. It just turned January."

It isn't really a surprise, because nothing can surprise Sam anymore. He thinks on it, the fact Bobby looks like he's shed twenty pounds, the half-starved dog, the cold. It feels like winter because it is winter, and just like time moved differently in Hell, it moved differently wherever they were.

It's _January_.

He takes it in stride.

Bobby leans over to snag a bottle of Jack from beside the sink as he waits for it to sink in, then, "There's more," he goes on, and he unscrews the cap of the whiskey and tips a finger of the liquor into Sam's coffee. "You'll need it," he responds to Sam's look, and Sam doesn't doubt him.

On the table there is a stack of old newspapers, and Bobby lifts the top one off of the pile. "I kept these," he mutters. "I don't really know why." A minute of quiet passes before he takes a deep breath. "The world you know is gone," he tells Sam, unfolding the newspaper as he speaks. It's the _New York Times_ , the entire front page taken up with a picture that is Sam's worst nightmare.

"Thing exploded out of the Pacific like fuckin' Godzilla about three days after you boys did your vanishing act from Easter Island," Bobby continues. "It's been rampaging off and on since then. Whole damn planet has gone to shit. The polar ice cap melted overnight, sea levels have risen by two hundred feet. Anything coastal is underwater…Eastern Seaboard, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Florida's nothing more than a bad memory, and that's just the States. Half of Europe's gone. Millions have drowned." His expression turns even more grim then. "The global economy don't exist anymore, we're in Year Zero. No one even knows where the President is. We're under martial law, but it's anyone's guess who's giving the orders…local militias mainly. It's down to pockets of resistance versus the things out there that are roaming what's left."

Sam stares at the picture, the creature he saw in the cavern caught from a distance on a wide-angle lens, surrounded by a city in flames, and looking like a Harryhausen monster from a B-movie. The Earth died screaming while they were trapped in its vaults, just like Meg said, and there is no taking this in stride; the reality of it is stupefying and the irony is bitter. "We didn't stop it," he whispers.

"Well, it's gone," Bobby replies. "Vanished three days ago, from what I've heard on the CB radio."

 _When they did the ritual_ , Sam realizes, as he casts his eyes back up. "What things are roaming?" he sidetracks hoarsely, as he tries to round up the brain cells that scattered and fled for the hills at Bobby's revelations.

"You name it," Bobby says. "Demons, vamps, ghouls. Those fish-mutants. Other things that sound like those fire-vampires you ran into in Rhode Island. Dragons, for Christ's sake. Sea serpents. Weird stuff right out of Lovecraft. It's like this gave every damn creature in the book a speedball, they're faster, stronger, smarter. Lot of missing out there…and that's only what we knew about up until telecommunications were cut off. It's speculation, but we're guessing more of those paths opened up while this thing was loose, let every monster and his wife, kids and dog out to party."

Sam swipes a shaking hand through his hair, tries to get his head back in the game. "What about this place, is it safe?"

Bobby grimaces. "Near as we can make out. We're off the beaten track enough not to have pinged anything's radar…not so far, anyway. We've laid wards, and I got a glamour set up to hide the place – go out through the gate and look back, and all you see is mountain. Seems to be keeping things out for now. I have the dogs just in case." He taps his fingers thoughtfully on the tabletop. "What's the deal with the demon? Only she passed all the tests."

Sam had forgotten Meg, and the reminder has him shake his head. "I don't even really know," he says. "That thing had her, it spat her out, and she wasn't a demon anymore."

Bobby's lip curls and his thought process plays out in his expression, punctuated by his recall of Sam's own murderous rampage through his home, Sam can see the memories there in his eyes as clear as day.

The old man's verdict carries a pointed undertone of suspicion mixed with distaste. "But she's still Meg. And still soulless."

"She's human," Sam notes warily, after a moment's hesitation. "If it's as bad as you say out there, it's in her interest to behave. And I don't know…maybe we need all the humans we can get?" Sam doesn't know if he actually means it or believes it, hasn't really weighed up the pros and cons. Part of him knows it isn't rational given the history, but he remembers the odd respect with which Meg pulled his brother's body out of the way on the beach. And beyond it all, he's overwhelmed, doesn't want to think about hard decisions. "She could be useful. So maybe we just – give her the benefit of the doubt. Like you did me."

After a long stare, Bobby sniffs. "We tattoo her. And she drinks a mug of holy water morning, noon and night. And wherever she sleeps, there's a devil's trap at the doorway just in case." He nods at Sam's forgotten oatmeal then. "Best eat, boy," he chides gruffly. "We can't afford to waste food these days."

It's Bobby's usual mix of stern but caring, and Sam spoons in a couple of mouthfuls obediently, washes it all down with a gulp of tepid coffee-with-a-kick as he marshals his thoughts. He's hungrier than he realized, and he wonders how it is he can be hungry at all when he has no appetite to speak of. As he chews, he contemplates the enormity of what Bobby has told him, spirals around it in ever-decreasing circles until he pulls up on a couple of the smaller details in the big picture, small details that matter even in the face of overwhelming loss. "You said Florida and California are both gone…"

"I got no intel on the Braedens," Bobby confirms somberly. "It happened pretty fast. I did get a message to Garth right after it all blew up…he was outside of Reno, said he'd detour and try to get the Novaks somewhere safe. That's the last I heard from him."

His tone is neutral enough, but Sam can read the subtext. "Don't tell Cas that," he says quietly. "If he asks, we tell him Claire's fine."

Bobby nods, continues more businesslike. "There's practicalities to this life. We run the generator for an hour first thing, so we have some water and power to the house." He points to a row of plastic water bottles lined up on the floor near the door. "Those should get us through the day. We got the cow for milk, some chickens. There's plenty of game, and we run into one of the outlying towns once every couple weeks for supplies. We're stockpiling canned goods, siphoning the gas out of every vehicle we come across."

Sam wonders then about the people, and Bobby continues as if he read his mind.

"Air National Guard mobilized out of Joe Foss Field early on, evacuated most of the townsfolk. We've run into some looters in town, mix of human and not, so stay frosty anywhere outside the gate. And you stay inside the house after sundown, just in case." He pauses, tugs a map out of his vest pocket and spreads it out on the table. "Plan is to move out of here when the weather warms up, head for Montana."

Sam blinks. "What's in Montana that's worth leaving here for if this place is secure?"

"Hunter camp." Bobby points to a circle drawn on the map. "In Swan River wildlife refuge, near Flathead Lake. Big and getting bigger, from what I hear on the CB grapevine. There's more safety in numbers. Tamara and Jonas Harper—"

"Jonas Harper?" Sam interrupts, and Bobby nods.

"He called here right after that thing first appeared, before the phones were knocked out. Said you gave him my number. Showed up about two weeks later with a bunch of kids in tow, and then he and Tamara lit out to Swan River with Missouri, Jody Mills, Marcy Ward, and a few townsfolk that were left."

Sam recalls how capable Harper had been, remembers how the ex-priest had clicked so unexpectedly with Castiel. There's a moment when he wonders if the other man's experience of loss might have been some use, before the thought is superseded by the realization that Bobby is still here, months on. "But you didn't go with them," Sam says, almost to himself. "Or Mira. And you didn't ward against angels, or Cas wouldn't have been able to bring us back."

Bobby huffs a little. "Well, you know. We wanted to wait. Just in case." He stops to take a swig of the whiskey, fixes Sam with bloodshot eyes. "Guess a little part of me never stopped hoping."

Sam smiles weakly. "You didn't seem that hopeful when I was on the other side of the door."

Bobby returns the smile, just about. "Precautions," he concedes. "You were towing a demon. But it's real good to see you, son." His voice catches in his throat as he speaks, and Sam swallows and nods as the old man leans back in his seat. He studies Sam for a long and meaningful moment. "Heading to Montana will mean leaving your brother behind," he goes on carefully. "It'll mean convincing Cas to leave your brother behind." He glances over at the window again and his brow furrows as he swivels back to meet Sam's gaze. "He's been out there since before I got up, and it's barely forty-three degrees. I took some hot coffee out to him, sat there with him as long as I could, but my knees were seizing up."

As a hint, it isn't even in the ballpark of subtle.

The cold outside is still a shock to the system, and Sam has to pull his jacket in tight and wrap his arms around himself as he trudges through the lot, casting a wary eye at the dogs who trot out from between piles of discarded tires and old wrecks to inspect him, hackles raised suspiciously. It occurs to him that he doesn't even know what he's going to say to Castiel after what happened on the beach, and the stunned expression on the angel's face as he took note of the amulet resting on Sam's chest and pieced it all together. As it is, Castiel doesn't acknowledge him as he crunches across the frost-stiffened grass to where the dug-over patch of earth cuts a black scar into the land.

The angel is motionless, a quilt draped loosely around him. His face is ashen, his eyes dull and shadowed, his lips tinged blue in the cold. He has one hand resting on the grave, as if to steady himself. He looks beaten, crushed, destroyed, and Sam's mind is suddenly filled with the horrifying possibility that Castiel might have thrown himself on the pyre if he had burned Dean. _Sati_ , they used to call it, and Sam remembers reading about it in school. For a few ghastly seconds, he can almost smell burning meat and hear the screaming as Castiel immolates himself, and he has to bite down on his knuckle because it makes him think of the Cage. He forces it out of his imagination and his memory, but just as he's opening his mouth to speak, the angel cuts him off flatly.

"Have you come to tell me that I will adapt, Sam? That this will get easier?"

Sam knows the glacier that forms inside the newly bereaved, knows that it is impervious to everything but the time that slowly thaws it, until it melts into tears that fill a dead sea in the hollow space where the iceberg was. The sea is the barrier between two worlds, the world of the dead and the world of living, and crossing it is like traveling to a distant land. Some people sink and drown, some people swim. If you're lucky, you get a lifeboat. Dean had been Sam's lifeboat on that journey after Jess, and Sam doesn't honestly know if he can be Castiel's, but he can try. Ignoring the way his chest tightens, he rallies as best he can. "Maybe you will. Maybe you're stronger than you know, Cas."

"Your brother told me that. And he told me I wasn't alone in the darkness, but I am. I always will be now. I am angry with him for taking himself from me, and I hate him for doing it." Castiel's anguish is suddenly undercut with a simmering fury that makes Sam think unpleasantly of the way he flew apart on the beach, but it switches off as abruptly as it flared, and the glint of rage in his eyes is snuffed out, dissolving their vivid blue back to lifeless gray. "And I am in love with him," he whispers then. "I miss him. I am lonely for him. He was my soul, and I long for him."

After a moment where they stare each other down and Sam searches for something to say, he finally works his throat hard enough to stumble out a response. "It gets bearable," he offers, with as much conviction as he can muster.

"I have seen the Lake of Fire, Sam."

When Sam meets Castiel's gaze again, the angel's eyes are wretched. "In Hell, I passed by an endless, blazing sea fueled by the souls of the damned," he confides, part fearful and part awed. "I saw them caught in the furnace, saw their flesh sear from them so that nothing was left but charred bones. I saw them made whole again, because the Lake of Fire is a place of punishment, a place of perpetual torment, not annihilation. Its heat is unquenchable and hungry, and I saw the souls buffeted high by the flames before they plunged into the inferno again. I heard their despair, and it made me tremble with terror as I fled." He sucks in a shuddering breath. "How can I bear knowing he is there in my place?"

For a second it clouds Sam's mind with doubt that he can get through this himself, much less be there for the angel. Even so, he's dogged, and he steels himself against the knowledge that his brother is screaming in Hell right now. "I know how that feels. He went there for me too."

The reply is a gasp at best. "But why…why? I don't understand why he did it, I don't. _Why_? When it was me who should have been cast down there."

Sam closes his eyes, and Dean is right there in his mind, his eyes earnest, his resolve rock-solid. "The one who begins it is the one who must end it, Cas," he says. "Dean said it was him, said he just knew. Remember his fortune cookie? An enlightened individual is one who knows his own true value. That's what he told me, and he thought it meant something. He thought it meant this."

Castiel makes an incoherent, muffled choking sound, shakes his head. He's weeping, Sam can see the jerky tremor of his shoulders under the quilt. "That's not the only reason why he did it, Cas," he continues softly. "Dean gave you a gift, because he loved you. Please—"

"And angels bring suffering to the ones who love them." Castiel puts his hand up, covers his eyes as he leans into it and goes on. "That's what she told me. Kali. And Gabriel told her, and he was right."

Sam waits a moment, then sits down there next to Castiel. "Dean gave you a gift," he repeats. "Don't waste it like I did. Don't waste his sacrifice. That's no way to honor him." The ground is freezing cold under his ass because it's January, fucking _January_ , and Sam's mind is suddenly full of memories. "It's January, did Bobby tell you that?" he muses. "The twenty-fourth is Dean's birthday." He knows it's pretty random, but he keeps going. "We never made a big deal of birthdays. Dean was superstitious about it, thought it was tempting fate." He breaks off to bark out a painful laugh at the irony of the memory. "It was Jess's birthday too. And Dean's deal came due on my birthday, so I guess he was right at that."

Castiel cants his head to look at Sam, and his expression is dazed, his eyes swollen and clouded with pain.

"I know, Cas," Sam says. "I _know_. But don't lose yourself to this. You're the only piece of him I have left."

Castiel holds Sam's gaze, and after a moment of quiet, he shifts closer, so they're shoulder to shoulder. "Anything," he whispers. "I would have done anything for him, anything to keep him from harm."

Sam leans on Castiel, hears himself choke out, "That's how he felt about you," and lets his own tears flow unchecked.

It is January.

The twenty-fourth day of this wretched, savage month is Dean's birthday, and Castiel's mind is a raw, bleeding memory of how he kissed his way up and down Dean's body on the same day twelve months before; of how new they were to each other, of how Dean shivered and moaned underneath him, of how he carded his hands through Castiel's hair and rocked his hips up slowly, gasping and stuttering out nonsense as Castiel swallowed him down and drank from him.

January, _lanuarius_ , is named for Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and endings; Janus, who had jurisdiction over all doorways, portals and passageways.

And keyholder of the gates of Hell.

January's birthstone is _constancy_.

There is mistletoe growing on Dean's tree, its silver berries glowing eerily in the dark green sprays. Mistletoe is a token of goodwill and friendship, an omen of happiness and good luck.

Castiel notes these things in his journal because they are _significant_.

He doesn't know how or why they are significant, and muses that he may be going mad.

He shows Bobby his notes the next time the old man comes out to sit with him. "These facts are significant," he insists, and he can't shake the feeling that he is running out of time.

"Why, son?" Bobby asks him, with infinite, sad weariness. "Why are they significant?"

Castiel stares at the words he wrote, and feels helpless. "I don't know why," he whispers, and he doesn't tell Bobby that he feels as if some cosmic clock is counting down the days, and that it matters. "But I will know. Soon."

He counts a page for each day between the day they arrived back in Sioux Falls – the fourth day of January, according to Bobby – and the day that will mark Dean's birthday, and at the top of the specified page he writes a reminder to himself. _Today is Dean's birthday_.

"Are you going to do something stupid?" Bobby broaches the matter in his usual blunt way, the words laced with suspicion.

Castiel gazes at him dumbly for a moment. Then, "Define stupid…" he offers.

Bobby's fingers are playing nervously over his chin, tugging at his beard. "I don't want to lose another son," he blurts out roughly, and he stands and stalks back through the lot.

There are no weapons in the house after that, Castiel notices. All of them are gone, _hidden_ , the knives and scissors too. It makes him smile secretly to himself because he has his own weapon, one he could use to gut his grace as Rachel once tried to; and there are so many other ways to kill that he knows of, ways Sam and Bobby can't even imagine. But he won't do it, can't do it. He doesn't know why, but he knows his reticence is _significant_.

By the ninth day of January Sam and Bobby are leaving Castiel to his grief, but he knows this doesn't mean they have forgotten him or that they don't care about him; he can see that they do in each careful, assessing look they give him when they think his attention is elsewhere, can hear it in their hushed tones and the abrupt silence when he walks into the room, can feel it in the weight of their distant, attentive stares when he stumbles outside to sit with Dean.

He knows Sam and Bobby hope that embracing his pain will help him define and process his loss, that it will help him adjust to his new reality and reconstruct his life, but he can't make sense of it because he can't comprehend the incomprehensible. They hope that time will heal him, but it has no _meaning_ , any of it, because they didn't stop it. The apocalypse happened, and is happening still, and Castiel feels outrage. "Give me a cause," he hollers up at the sky, until his voice fades and dies with the strain of his shouts. "Give me justification." There is no answer, and he thinks to take to the heavens to search for his Father like he did before, but what's left of his grace is stubborn and resistant to his call, and his wings barely unfurl, scarcely visible and fluttering weakly.

He knows Sam and Bobby hope his pain will mellow as it ages, knows they think his grief is an event that will pass, but Castiel knows it is a state of mind that will always be present, sometimes ebbing, sometimes flowing, but never gone; always persistent and unrelenting. And he invites it to stay, savors it, and mourns with a vigilant, stricken ferocity, mourns until he can hardly breathe with it. Sometimes he wonders absently if this is millennia of sorrow that has built up inside him, sorrow he was not made to feel without the soothing buffer of the Host. He is adrift in it, caught in a current he can't fight, swept and spun along in a torrent of dark water. The structure of his life is gone and he is in a void, without direction except for the tug of Dean that still pulls at his heart. _Creatures like you and I were not built to love as humans do_ , Kali had told him, and Castiel's love has broken him just as she said it would; it has cut him open and now that his grace is not strong enough to shield him from emotion, his loss is a wound that gapes and suppurates.

Angels do not weep but Castiel sobs tears he dreams might revive Dean, and as they fall he remembers Meg's words on the beach at R'lyeh, and his guilty denial of the fix she suggested. He remembers the insanity of those first solitary moments of horrified realization, as he screamed out his sorrow and tried to claw the tattered remnants of the smashed body he held together again, tried to stitch it back to life with the frayed threads of his grace even if the result would have been a soulless monster. He wonders what might have happened had his grace been strong enough to do more than repair one broken bone, and he is _tempted_ , so tempted that he leans over the dirt to blow out breath that would be life-giving if he was still what he was.

No hand crumbles the soil and breaks through, like it did in Pontiac as he watched from the spaces in between worlds.

The truth of it makes Castiel wail and shriek out sounds he didn't realize he had in him, the destruction and pain Kali spoke of, and he dedicates himself to it, his fury equal to his sadness. "I hate you for leaving me," he hisses, and then, as remorse swells, he presses his muddy hand to his scar and chokes out, "I love you, Dean, please tell me you are there, please…" He projects all of his love and need, waits to feel an answering flare of heat. _Nothing_ , and he rubs, scrapes, tears frantically at his skin for hours until it smarts and stings, and his fingers are scrabbling at slick, bloody wounds soiled with the dirt of Dean's grave. The damage makes Castiel feel ill and dizzy with fever but at last, _warmth_ , seeping through his palm, and he slumps into it, sobs out his relief and tells himself it is _significant_. The fat white flakes that are drifting down and settling on him are _significant_ too. "Dean, look," Castiel whispers through his tears. "The clouds are pregnant with snow."

As the temperature drops, there is the scuff of a boot behind him.

"Please come inside, Cas," Sam says, and when Castiel slants his gaze upwards he can see ice crystals on his own eyelashes.

"I've been trying," he tells Sam, and he is sure to keep his jaw set firm so that Sam will not hear his shivering. "But part of me is gone. I am half a person, Sam, and this life… _all_ of this, has no point to it without him. I look, but I see nothing. I hear, but I don't listen. I walk, but I don't want to leave his side. I eat, but I want to starve." He puts his fingers to his neck. "I speak…but there is a scream, stuck right here in my throat. I breathe, but I don't want this breath. My heart beats, but I want it to wither and die. This hemorrhage inside me can't be staunched, and this curse is not one I can bear."

Sam's face falls, suffused all at once with his own sadness. "I miss him too, Cas," he whispers. "But I'm trying, man. You have to try too, or else what is there?" He sighs, turns and walks back to the house. Mira is waiting on the porch for him and he leans into her and rests his head on her shoulder for a moment, before straightening and draping an arm around her as they disappear through the door. Sam has found someone, Castiel muses, and it makes him glad.

The afternoon drags on in its customary inertia, and the sky is bruised murky when Castiel hears a low snort. He turns again, to see Meg standing behind him this time. "I don't know why you stay," he says tiredly. "There's nothing here for you."

"There's a roof and a full belly if I do my share of the work," she retorts. "Sam and Bobby don't seem to care much as long as I help out and don't get in the way."

She pulls a bottle out of her pocket, unscrews the cap and upends it so that liquid pours out and into the soil, says, "Have a drink on me," and then swallows a mouthful herself. "One of the perks of the Apocalypse is all that free booze at the local liquor store," she tells Castiel, and she grins. "If Dean was here, he'd approve. Though I doubt he'd feel the same way about you sitting out here on his grave all day, blubbering." She considers Castiel for a moment longer. "You know, I thought you had more chutzpah," she mocks. "That's what I liked about you…you found a cause and stuck with it, and when someone knocked you down you got right back up. The little angel that could, taking on all-comers, even the Devil himself. But here you are, picking at your scabs and wallowing in your feelings instead of finding a solution."

"There is no solution," Castiel growls back at her. "I told you back on the island. I can't get there. My grace is too weak now, I'm not strong enough to pass into Hell."

She flaps a dismissive hand. "So find a shortcut. A back door."

Her words remind Castiel that January is named for Janus, who was guardian of all of the doorways in existence, and _it is significant_ , he thinks.

"You know there are back doors," she's saying now. "That little gnome-guy used one to get in and pull the spare Winchester out of the Cage. I snuck through one myself after the Winchesters sent me back to Hell."

Castiel knows his face lights up in hope, but she shakes her head. "Sorry, Clarence, no can tell. My memory is pretty fuzzy since my juice got squeezed out of me."

Frustration wells up in Castiel. "The doors between the realms are locked against me now," he snaps. "My grace was the key, and without all of it, I can't—"

"So find a door that isn't locked," she offers. "Or find another key. Or you could always pray. But then again we both know God hasn't been taking your calls for a long time." She pouts. "Nor mine either. I got born again for nothing, so it seems." She sups her liquor, belches, and her vibe is suddenly irritable, her voice cracking as bitter as the coffee Bobby brings out to Castiel three times a day in his Thermos. "How do you stand it? The fall?"

Castiel cocks his head, studies her curiously, and somewhere in his mind he realizes this is the first time he has really looked at her since R'lyeh. Her face is haggard, her hair stringy, her skin gray, her lips chapped and chewed. She carries the aroma of stale liquor and cigarette smoke with her, and her clothes are filthy.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, Castiel reminds her, "You fell up. In a manner of speaking."

Her smile is too bright, bright enough to be desperate. "It doesn't feel that way."

"Back on the island, you said you thought God had saved you," Castiel points out.

Her expression rearranges itself into something harder, contemptuous. "I said that so you wouldn't kill me." She pauses to wrap her jacket around her, and Castiel sees that she's shivering in the cold. "It doesn't feel like salvation," she murmurs. "It feels more like eternal damnation. To be one of them, to be brought so fucking _low_. I haven't been redeemed, I've been condemned."

She's already turning around, slightly unsteady on her feet; drunk maybe, Castiel assumes. There isn't much else to do. She looks back over her shoulder at him, and she has already cycled to her next mood change, in that way the inebriated do. She smiles, winks, and she's cheerful. "Maybe I need to make the best of it. After all, when one door closes another one opens, isn't that what they say?"

It's an unexpected tangent but Castiel thinks it sounds familiar, and _significant_ , so significant that he pulls his journal out of his pocket and writes it in one of the spaces on the same page he has set aside for Dean's birthday, while Meg drifts back towards the house.

_These things are significant:_

_When one door closes another one opens._

_Find a door that isn't locked._

_Or find a door you have a key for._

Castiel studies the words, traces the tip of his finger over them. When one door closes another one opens, and Castiel knows the adage, somehow and from somewhere – and suddenly there it is, in a flash of memory. "It's my fortune," he murmurs to himself. "A prophecy…a sign, it's a sign. But a sign of what, what _door_ , where…"

  


It hits like a lightning bolt: sudden clarity, knowledge that has him gasp at its logic and reason, and its sheer simplicity.

He feels a brief moment of panic…how much time is left? He has lost track, and _tempus-fugit-tempus-fugit_.

He flicks through the pages.

Fourteen days.

A _plan_ , he thinks. Tactics, a scheme. He is a battle-hardened strategist, and he will need to be wily, he will need to be devious and shrewd, and he will need to lie.

A sound drifts in through the gaps in Castiel's thoughts, a dreary bellowing. It's the cow, he realizes. It's time for the evening milking, and Bobby is already trudging around the side of the house. Castiel pushes up, waits through the head rush, and then trots off in pursuit. "Wait," he calls, and Bobby swings around, the surprise plain on his face.

Castiel slows to a walk, because he's faint and breathless from the exertion. "I feel better," he announces, and he points to the bucket in Bobby's hand. "I need to feel busy. Will you show me how?"

The old man's expression turns dubious for a moment as he contemplates Castiel, and then his eyes fix on Castiel's hands and his nostrils wrinkle in distaste. "You'll have to scrub those."

Meg is leaning on the side of the shed smoking a cigarette, and she stubs it out as Bobby and Castiel approach. "You look perkier," she notes, and Castiel shrugs.

"Bobby is going to show me how to milk the cow," he tells her, and she brays out a laugh that sends a frisson of annoyance flaring through him. "Its name is Meg," he adds snidely.

Sam gestures out the window at Castiel where he sits on the hood of the Impala, bundled up in a jacket Sam recognizes as being Dean's, scribbling industriously in the journal Dean gave him. "How convinced are you by that?"

Behind him, Mira snorts. "Well, you know him better than me. But I'm not convinced at all."

It's enough to poke Sam's own doubt. Even so, "Bobby thinks he's doing better," he points out.

"Bobby loves him," comes the reply. "Bobby doesn't want to think he might lose another son. So Bobby chooses not to see."

Sam persists. "He's been eating, even helps Bobby milk the cow most evenings. He isn't sitting out _there_ all day."

Mira pushes up and pads over to stand next to him, her coffee mug in her hand, and she clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Back in the old country before we got out, a friend of my mother's thought she saw one of the men who killed her family. But she coped. She was normal, did the normal everyday things. She was calm, so calm we didn't realize what she was planning."

Her tone is crisp, dispassionate, and Sam has learned enough about this woman he loves to know that her detachment is a self-defense mechanism. He slides his eyes sideways at her. "Which was…?"

"To make us think she was fine until my mother's guard lapsed for long enough for her to stop watching the gun." Mira shrugs. "She shot him, then herself." She drains her mug, and her eyes narrow speculatively as she stares through the gap in the curtain. "Can he die?"

Sam knows Castiel can – he saw his friend drowned lifeless, though he has no real idea whether or not another miracle resurrection might have followed even without Jonas Harper's resuscitation skills. "Honest, I don't know," he murmurs. "Maybe. Meg said he told her his grace has pretty much dried up since we got back." He studies Castiel again, the angel's stillness that more than ever seems to be masking something pent-up and colossal even if Castiel claims there is little left of him. "I don't know," he says again, and then, "Bobby hid the guns."

Mira gives him a wry smile. "It's a waste of time to hide them from him, I told Bobby this. If he wants to do it, he'll find a way…and if he doesn't want to do it, then leaving him unarmed puts him at risk, especially if his grace is fading." She leans over to deposit her mug in the sink before her expression turns thoughtful. "Perhaps he won't do it because it's a sin."

Sam winces. "I don't think he believes anymore," he says quietly, from that dark space inside him that doesn't really believe anymore and hasn't for a long time.

Her eyes soften. "I don't think anyone really believes anymore," she says, and then she pauses. "It hasn't been long. He'll find purpose, maybe. And perhaps that will help him. But he should have a weapon in the meantime. Especially with the demon here." Her eyes narrow and she spits out the last with a baleful undercurrent to her tone, because Meg's presence has been a sore point with her since day one.

Sam sighs, keeps his own tone neutral. "She hasn't caused any problems."

"Yet. Look, I get it. She's still here because you and Bobby are—" Mira stops abruptly, continues more carefully after a brief pause. "You have other things on your mind. But this…" She stabs a finger at the window. "A fallen angel mourns his lost grace. How do you know a fallen demon doesn't grieve for her lost taint? She could…" She scrunches up her face, clutches at the thin air with her hand in the way she does when a word doesn't come naturally to her.

"Recidivate," Sam fills in.

Mira snaps her thumb and fingers together with a flourish. "Exactly."

"But Bobby tattooed her," Sam says. "And he's got her glugging holy water three or four times a day."

"She's compromised by her past. She is human, maybe, but she has no soul."

Mira gives him a sidelong glance when she says that, and Sam can see the assessment in the look, the reference to his own past, and his soulless rampage through humanity. "I was given another chance," he says.

"You were resouled," she parries smartly. "But what would have happened otherwise?"

Sam knows the answer to that, saw it in Dean's eyes when his brother stared him down through the hatch in the panic room door, and he knows there would have been no other option, not really. He sighs again, and Mira nudges him.

"You want to see the good," she says softly. "That's who you are. But when you focus too hard on the good, you sometimes look past the bad. We just need to be careful. If you're going out with me today, Castiel needs a weapon. Bobby is old, and slow." She shrugs at the look Sam gives her, snipes affectionately, "It's true," as she shuffles back to her chair and sits down to pull on her boots. "We'll go further this time," she decides. "Bobby says there are farms nearer to Fort Pierre where we might find fuel."

Sam exhales slowly. "What do you think of this plan to head to Montana?"

"I think it's a bad plan," she replies bluntly. "But I also think it's a realistic plan. We can't stay here long-term. There's water there, game too…coalmines and an oil refinery close by for fuel. It's defensible. And there is safety in numbers." She gags dramatically. "Even if the fucking winters will be miserable. So…we keep harvesting fuel. So we don't run out of gas on the road." She pushes up again, stretches. "It's a shame none of us can fly a plane. There must be many abandoned aircraft at Joe Foss Field, and at Glawes too. There's an airport in Kalispell, not far from Flathead Lake."

Sam bounces it back without really thinking. "Dean is afraid of flying." It pulls the breath out of him in a heavy, painful twist of oxygen leaving his lungs, so he has to gasp for his next inhale. Mira doesn't react, her eyes don't flicker away from his as he rides it out, the sheer _lack_ of his brother and the knowledge of where Dean is.

"My aunt…" Mira says after a few moments. "Remember I told you about what happened to us?"

At Sam's nod, she continues. "She lived with us always, from when I was a baby. She was my second mother. She died there, in the mud, stripped half-naked. And after the men left, I came out of my hiding place and found her. I walked back into the house. Her cup of tea was there. It was still warm. Her breakfast, half-eaten; her fork with a mouthful of food on it waiting for her to come back inside and complain about being disturbed so early on a Saturday. Her glasses were right where she put them down on the table to go and see what the shouting was. She had been doing a crossword in the newspaper. I could smell her perfume, and she was all around me…her _presence_. Everything was the same, but nothing was. She no longer existed. She was gone."

She clears her throat. "I ate the food from her fork, put my lips where hers had just been. I kept her glasses. The newspaper…it's still in my bag. I look at it, at the ink from her pen, faded now. I imagine her reading the clues, I imagine her smiling as she finds the right word. I look at the paper and if I think hard enough, I can see her writing the words. It's proof that she was here even if the space she filled is empty."

Sam won't give her platitudes, she never has with him, has only put her hands on him and her arms around him as he leans on her. He presses his hand to his chest, feels the hard shape of the amulet under his shirt, proof that Dean was here. "I miss him," he whispers.

"And you always will, _moja ljubav_ ," Mira says. "There is never enough time, not really." She pauses a beat, then motions her head towards the window. "You should tell him we're heading out. He might worry if he can't find you. You should – you know. Say goodbye."

Any one of them could die, anytime, anywhere. Sam knows that's what she means and he almost smiles at the irony of some things staying the same in this cowardly new world. "Yeah, I'll go see him," he says, and he bends to drop a kiss on Mira's hair as he passes.

Just like every time he steps off of the porch, Sam's focus is drawn to his brother's tree in the near distance, and he has to drag his eyes away from it and dig his fingernails into his palms to distract himself.

Castiel has stopped writing, and he looks up from where he's playing his hand over the metal skin of the car as Sam approaches, and queries, "Do you see this?"

He points at a spot beside his thigh and Sam leans in to examine it, the gleam of silver through a scratch in the finish. For a few seconds he feels helpless, clueless, because this was Dean's department and Sam's big hands never were as dexterous as his brother's when it came to mechanics. "She could rust, I guess," he offers generically. "Bobby probably has something we can use on it."

Castiel frowns. "It wasn't there before." He says it seriously, thoughtfully. "It wasn't there yesterday."

Sam flounders some more. "It's an old car," he notes, and it occurs to him that his brother's baby hasn't been parked there for just over a month at all, because time raced away while they were gone. "We should maybe have Bobby cover her, so—"

"Put your hand on her. Flat. Like this."

Castiel spreads his fingers out, inclines his head like he's listening, like he's fascinated by something. His fingers are dirty, the tips stained and the nails rimmed in a rusty red that is nauseatingly familiar.

"Is that blood on your fingers?" Sam accuses, and he knows he sounds anxious. "That looks like blood."

Castiel nods briefly, and his handwave is matter-of-fact. "The dogs were fighting. I had to intercede."

It's an everyday occurrence, the skinny mutts scrapping noisily somewhere in the lot, and Sam lets it go with a breath of relief for the simple things. "Well, you should wash your hands before you eat with them," he says, as idiotic as he knows it sounds. He puts his own hand down to the metal then, feels the faint heat of the car's winter sun-warmed paintwork against his palm. "Am I looking for something in particular?" he asks.

There is a moment when Castiel studies him with what seems like a touch of his old critical stare, like he's gauging Sam, debating whether to let him into a secret. It's not unlike their first meeting and it catches Sam off-guard, makes him shift uncomfortably before Castiel prompts, "Do you feel anything?"

"Uh…" Sam furrows his brow, baffled. "I need more…what am I—"

"Her grace," Castiel jumps in, and his demeanor is somehow hopeful now. "Look how it shines. I saw it once before, with Dean, just after he brought me back." He stares down again, long fingers playing over the bright streak. "He was here," he murmurs. "He was here, Sam. His hands were here, right where our hands are."

There is never enough time, not really, and the space Dean filled gapes like a crater stretching into infinity. _I miss my brother_ , Sam thinks again, but he doesn't say it out loud this time. He leans his butt on the hood of the car for a moment, and maybe he does feel a haphazard buzz of something skittering its way up his spine, or maybe it's just the shudder that seems to have settled permanently in his bones since R'lyeh. "I'm heading out on a supply run with Mira," he diverts. "We might be a couple of days."

"I'll need the weapons bag."

It's casual, but is it too fast? Is it Sam's imagination that the air is suddenly taut and charged? He can't tell; can't tell if Castiel's eyes are shining with the sorrow of unshed tears, or glinting alert and sly.

"My grace is all but gone," the angel goes on. "I need the weapons to protect myself and Bobby if anything should happen."

His tone is oddly placid in comparison to the abrupt vibe of being switched on and psyched up, and it makes Sam even more unsure. He wavers despite the conversation he just had with Mira, and doesn't reply for a moment.

Castiel raises an eyebrow, one corner of his mouth hitching up a little. "I'm not going to do anything stupid, Sam."

He's imperious now, utters it like a challenge, an edge of annoyance cresting the words. They hang there in the quiet, _expectant_ , and is that the light of sanity in Castiel's gaze, or is it the gleam of the madman? Sam can't decipher it, and his uncertainty can take it no longer. He makes a decision, knows Bobby will likely whale on him for it. "Come on," he answers on a sigh, and he straightens from where he's been lounging to make his way around to the back of the Impala, Castiel tagging along.

"Hidden in plain sight," Castiel observes wryly, as Sam uses his shirtsleeve to rub at the sigil scrawled on the inside of the trunk once he pops it.

"Bobby figured it was the last place you'd look," Sam confirms, as Castiel reaches for his crossbow and picks his way idly through the guns.

The angel huffs out a brittle, gravel laugh. "I wasn't looking. Like I said, I'm not planning anything stupid."

He focuses square on Sam, and Sam remembers how there was always something fey and tense about Castiel when he lied before, the wary dart of his eyes away to focus on anything but Dean, the miniscule ruffle of his composure that was there and gone so fast Sam had always wondered if he was imagining it. But here and now, Castiel's gaze is unblinking, and his shoulders are relaxed. Even so, Sam makes it blatant. "You better not be playing me, Cas."

After a patient sigh, Castiel assures him, "I'm not playing you, Sam."

He keeps pointing that flat, relentless stare at Sam, until Sam himself feels self-conscious and his eyes falter. He clears his throat harshly. "Well. See you soon, Cas," he says. "Stay frosty, huh?" And he turns to head for the truck.

The wound on Castiel's chest burns, and it means something.

The scrape on Dean's car is lustrous silver that draws Castiel like a magnet. It's familiar, and it means something.

When one door closes another door opens, and it's Castiel's fortune, and it means something, just as Dean's did.

Castiel writes it all down still, keeping a record he will leave where Sam and Bobby can find it. But his pen moves slower now, and his vision is gritty and blurred. He feels hot even in the winter freeze, but although the blood burns in his veins he finds he shivers.

It's getting darker as dusk approaches. Bobby walks by with the bucket, on his way to milk the cow, Cheney trotting along behind him. He snaps his fingers, _time to go in_. Castiel nods agreeably, but it isn't time to go inside, it's time to leave now that he has what he needs.

It takes one hundred sixty-five Bobby-sized strides to get to the small corral the old man constructed behind the house for his cow, and Castiel counts them down, like he has each time he has accompanied Bobby on this chore so that he could be sure. He knows the cow will be waiting by the gate, that it will amble after Bobby as Bobby walks the twenty steps from the gate to the shack in the corner of the enclosure.

Castiel slides into the Impala, places his journal on the shotgun seat, and counts down the ten minutes it will take Bobby to tether the cow, wash his hands, slosh soapy water on the animal's udders, and make himself comfortable on his milking stool. Now is the precise moment when the cow will bellow out its discomfort and shift on her hooves as Bobby leans in to start stripping out the milk, and Castiel has timed it perfectly, turns the key in the ignition in the same instant he hears the animal's distant bawling.

The engine coughs and fires loudly enough to make him wince, eases off to a throaty purr as Castiel recalls Dean's cursory roadcraft advice, _just point and go, yellow lights mean drive faster_. Brake, shift, just like Dean showed him, and Castiel clicks the lever up into drive, raises his foot so the car grinds forward slowly. _Gas_ , and Castiel presses down tentatively on the pedal, feels her muscles coil and tense under him as she creeps forward a little faster. He pushes harder and she snarls keenly as she speeds up. He takes a deep breath and heads through the lot to the gate, where he jolts her to a halt.

He must conserve what is left of his grace for what is to come, so Castiel deals with the padlock securing the chain around the gate the old-fashioned way, using the lock picks Dean keeps in the glovebox, before steering the car out under the sign and onto the road. Chain rewound around the gate and padlock replaced, he glances over his shoulder just once as he drives away, sees nothing behind him but a cracked, gnarled rock face: the glamour spell Sam and Bobby have spoken of. It reminds Castiel of the mountains in the other worlds and he shivers, tells himself the memory isn't a bad omen.

At the top of the road, Castiel turns left. After a couple of minutes he sees the first signpost, and five minutes after that he's on I-90. It's the same route Dean took to get them to Black Hills national park on their hunt for a Christmas tree, and the road is as deserted as it was back then, the fields that border it draped in spotless ivory just like they were on that journey. Castiel can't see the blacktop that lies beneath the white powder, but he centers the car between the poles that line the road and presses on. Bobby will know he's gone by now, and Castiel can imagine the old man's gruff dismay as he shouts impotently at the empty spot where the car was, can almost hear his enraged yell, _boy, what the hell are you doing?_ He knows Bobby will be calling Sam on the CB radio, knows that Sam might already be speeding his way back to Sioux Falls, might even be there by now and following Castiel's trail, driving the truck through the ruts the Impala is cutting into the snow.

The car slides and glides, shimmies and skids on ice, each lurch sending a burning sensation rippling out from Castiel's shredded chest. It's a _sign_ , and he rubs at it with his right hand while he steers with his left, feels the oozing, wet warmth of the wound warm his cold-numbed fingers. _Find a door you have a key for_ , Meg had said, and she had been flippant and not entirely sober. But it was _significant_ , because Castiel knows where there is a door he has a key for.

He keeps heading west until he reaches the split in the road that will take him in a southerly direction, and the big car streaks across the broken land, mile markers and exits flitting by, until the sky darkens and only the sparkle-dance of moonglow on silver lights the way.

The hours split apart around them, the present moment fading into the past as Castiel drives towards his future.

Towards Devil's Gate pass and the abandoned cemetery at the center of Samuel Colt's iron trap.


End file.
